Re:Oh, great!
on
Sudo vs. Root
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Well, and what happens if it's a application being compromised who runs sudo?
I've never liked that "security measure" in mac os x or ubuntu. Take a IM app or browser. Find a bug in it, and exploit the hole by running "sudo rm -rf/".
AFAIK there's nothing stoping that from happening? What that tells to my head is "you can do anything as root by using sudo". How can that be called "security"? I use a shared computer between several people and the first thing I do is to run "sudo passwd" because, well, other person could do it if I don't do it before him.
If it doesn't have a password, I don't trust it. sudo just helps people to jump walls that they're not supposed to be able to jump.
Seriously. I mean, it's last "overhaul" was going to CSS. And what did we get? The SAME shit again.
Sadly this is very true. Slashdot is pretty much 90's design, the usability is very poor...
Starting with the main page. OK, I log in. So now I see my username at the left with links to my preferences, journal, etc. Then, I look at the right and...my username again. Sorry guys, can you just keep all user-related info in the SAME place? (Hint: usability is also the reason why many people uses livejournal and blogger instead of slashdot journals to blog)
Then look at every commentary (ej, yours). Below your comment I see this link (with center alignment, I don't know why) " Re:Slashdot is successful too... by ericdano (Score:1) ". Where on earth is that link pointing to? OK, so everybody knows it's the parent, but where is the interface saying that to you?
And the answers to that commentary are just below. Can't people just add a "Answers to this commentary", or something?
And the centered "table" with information about the moderation. Do I really want to know the details of the moderation? Maybe if I've moderation points (I don't). What I don't understand is why that table is centered and far from the place where moderation is show (top of the commentary)
Oh, and now let's go with the search field. Did you know slashdot has a search field? It has, it's just in the LAST place where you'd want it to be, in the top BOTTOM of every page.
And the left "menu". There's SO MUCH unuseful crap there that it hurts.
Oh, and the icons at the upper top of the page which represent the topics of the recently posted stories. It's just me who thinks that icons mean NOTHING? Even if you know what the icon means (and I doubt the computer icon means something to somebody in a computer-related site), if you want to tell users what have been the latest stories posted why not put some text about the stories themselves? Icons don't tell me if I want to click them - there're mozilla stories I want to read and there're mozilla stories I do NOT want to read so I just never click those icons
Hell, I'm not even a usability expert, but it's clear that slashdot does NOT looks good. I know there's a page where you get the list of the stories recently posted by all users for example, but I have NO idea where to find it. Sometimes I find it but I quickly forget it because it's not obvious at all.
There's a reason why sites like digg are gaining users: Is not that they're better, they just don't make you suffer to use them. They use javascript (slashdot could keep generating non-ajax code depending on the browser or keep a "old browser" compatibility page somewhere), etc.
And if it takes two years to modify the slash code to make slashdot usable just like it took years to make slash to use CSS, it means the slash code is crap.
And it's the...linux kernel changelog. I mean, there're things there that you're not going to understand if you don't understand a bit of kernel internals, just like you won't understand many details from the X.org changelog if you know nothing about graphics
If.NET is so cool why isn't Microsoft doing something similar?
Because Microsoft already has a lot of tools written in C++, and it'd be stupid to rewrite them just to "switch languages".
I'd expect that future developments will be done in C#, but why would Microsoft rewrite the whole OS in a new language for fun? Is that going to provide any new feature at all, except LOTS of work and new bugs?
You're right. Win2k uses a microkernel architecture. The kernel is kept tiny and streamlined, but upon receiving events it passes execution off to a userland service, which does all the work of addressing that event.
Uh? NT "microkernel" stopped being a real microkernel long time ago (just like mac os x). The TCP/IP stack, drivers (IDE/SCSI/SATA controllers, graphic/sound drivers etc), the filesystem, the VFS...EVERYTHING is in the kernel. In practice, windows and mac os x have the same disadvantages than monolithic kernels, except they were designed from scratch to be modular (in practice, monolithic kernels have evolved and become quite modular aswell, which is why these days monolithic kernels can continue adding features without rewriting the whole kernel and maintaining it despite of all the complexity hardware has today)
So, where exactly win2k "passes execution off to a userland service") As far as I know they implement in the kernel everything that a monolithic kernel implements, plus the graphics subsystem + window manager, plus software audio mixing, plus some parts of some codecs....
I don't think JVM's are the way to have decent security anymore. Things like SELinux allows you to run code natively (in any language) AND at the same time have sandbox-like security.
All the advantages, without any of the disadvantages. Why "virtual machines" exit at all? I already have a machine, a real one! Give me an operative system with a MAC framework, I'll leave others the overengineered abstractions.
I'm not shocked, here in Spain (and everywhere) the public schools are teaching windows/office on computer classes to all kids.
I mean, public schools are wasting lots of millions in making people learn microsoft-only technologies, and Microsoft is not wasting a single pennie on educating them.
...I bet the actual citizens of the EU won't see a 0.01 of any actual money the EU fines.
So, we should stop fining microsoft and act like we don't care about their monopolistic behaviours basing ourselves in how much money we can get from all this?
Maybe Bill lined the pockets of the US govt, but MS did things to help resolve this
Right! I can uninstall Internet Explorer from my windows xp computer today, can't I?
and even did totally stupid things like un-bundle the media player just for the EU
Is not about not including a media player, is about NOT BEING ABLE TO UNINSTALL IT. The EU commission should have forced Microsoft to provide a uninstall method
WTF good is an OS without an included media player?
Have I lost something, is the EU commission trying to force vendors to ship computers without media player? As far as I know, the ONE reason why the EU commission is asking Microsoft to release a windows version without windows media is because vendors may want to install a DIFFERENT windows media player. By the way, maybe you will be surprise to hear this, but windows server has a media player installed and you can't remove it.
Ah, yes. Except that the "documentation" that the commission is asking would actually allow other people (redhat, novell, sun, ibm) to build products which could integrate with windows clients so tightly as windows servers do.
Remember that 95% of the clients on the world use windows, so it's just NOT POSSIBLE to compete with Microsoft without that documentation. Non-microsoft server operating systems can't compete with microsoft without it.
Of course, that documentation would allow redhat, sun, ibm, novell etc. to compete with microsoft in europe, but in the WHOLE world. Yeah, I'm sure that Microsoft is being helpful here and helping the EU commission to document things as hard as they can.
And mind you, we're Europe, I don't claim we're the best but we have decent economies. $2.36 millions per day mean NOTHING for europe as a whole.
we shouldn't fine a company just because they are the major player or because they can afford it.
Except that Microsoft is a near monopoly and is playing dirty to avoid stop being the major player.
The Commission is asking Microsoft to DO-CU-MENT some things - propietary protocols used by windows clients like printing, networking etc. The commission is fining Microsoft because no matter how hard they try, Microsoft is NOT documenting anything.
The Commission wouldn't have to fine Microsoft if they didn't behave that way, in first place. Other companies haven't been able to compete with Microsoft for decades. Not because they don't know to create great products, but because Microsoft uses propietary protocols and tricks.
Why do you think Microsoft is selling so many windows servers? Is not that solaris & friends are bad server operative systems. Microsoft integrates clients with their servers using dirty tricks so no other server operating system on earth can integrate so tightly with windows clients as windows server does. Even if a company wants to compete, they CANT.
The commission is asking microsoft to document some things so other companies can compete as God intended. They're not asking them to give up their market share - they can continue being top 1 by creating good products - they're just forcing Microsoft to give opportunities to other companies. Microsoft is doing the impposible to avoid it, because they know sun, ibm, redhat etc. can build GREAT products which can put Windows server in shame, and they're not going to allow it if they can avoid it. I'm HAPPY Europe is doint this with Microsoft, the legal American system tried to do the same in the past but failed. Someone had to do it.
Well, it's the US where they're passing laws which make DRM legal (something that forbids me from choosing freely what product I want to buy, ej: you can't listen itunes song in any music player except in a ipod) or software patents (something that allows big companies to sit and sell licenses and win money without innovating anything or even trying to do better products)
It'd seem that US is not very interested in high-tech or software anymore, they just want to make shareholders happy with short-term operations by finding methods to monetize all what they have done in the past decades, without caring about the future at all, I guess that open source isn't that appealing in those market models.
A region from Spain, Extremadura, uses open source everywhere from schools to the machines in local-government buildings. It's not a very rich region but they want a different future, unlike the US
Oh, the Inquirer reports that vista eats 800 MB of RAM?
What makes you think that a product in development doesn't have a memory leak? What makes you think that Vista snapshots don't have the debug symbols compiled in?
And let me be the first to say that I'm not sure if that screenshots in that page really means the system is eating 800 MB of ram or they're also counting the filesystem cache as we do in linux.
Please, wait for the vista release and *then* speak.
Actually, it probably does - that's what the "personalized search" is about I guess.
In the other hand, why on earth does microsoft thinks that a ajax scrollbar is going to be better than the integrated browser scrollbar? A way to keep the search field at first sight? I'd rather have a search field which moves when I scroll down the page than that thing....also, it's not obvious for users how that scrollbar must be used. How I get more results? I had to spend a time trying to figoure out what's going on there.
There're many system supporting SCTP according to this page. Solaris and BSD with a external patch, for one, even there're windows implementations. But as usually, Microsoft, the "top 1" software company in the world isn't providing an implementation.
The Linux network stack is having tons of new things lately, SCTP is one, but how it compares with DCCP, which has also been implemented and merged in Linux?
The wikipedia assumes they share some properties, but it's SCTP a better DCCP, or what?
I really don't understand how they're going to get users to upgrade. If anything, this harms Skype. If I can't ru skype on a amd....i'll use...another VOIP program.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, and what happens if it's a application being compromised who runs sudo?
/".
I've never liked that "security measure" in mac os x or ubuntu. Take a IM app or browser. Find a bug in it, and exploit the hole by running "sudo rm -rf
AFAIK there's nothing stoping that from happening? What that tells to my head is "you can do anything as root by using sudo". How can that be called "security"? I use a shared computer between several people and the first thing I do is to run "sudo passwd" because, well, other person could do it if I don't do it before him.
If it doesn't have a password, I don't trust it. sudo just helps people to jump walls that they're not supposed to be able to jump.
Read _again_
Letting user know where a link points to is not "ajax". It's USABILITY.
Just because a site does not use ajax (or use it) doesn't means it's more or less usable.
Seriously. I mean, it's last "overhaul" was going to CSS. And what did we get? The SAME shit again.
Sadly this is very true. Slashdot is pretty much 90's design, the usability is very poor...
Starting with the main page. OK, I log in. So now I see my username at the left with links to my preferences, journal, etc. Then, I look at the right and...my username again. Sorry guys, can you just keep all user-related info in the SAME place? (Hint: usability is also the reason why many people uses livejournal and blogger instead of slashdot journals to blog)
Then look at every commentary (ej, yours). Below your comment I see this link (with center alignment, I don't know why) " Re:Slashdot is successful too... by ericdano (Score:1) ". Where on earth is that link pointing to? OK, so everybody knows it's the parent, but where is the interface saying that to you?
And the answers to that commentary are just below. Can't people just add a "Answers to this commentary", or something?
And the centered "table" with information about the moderation. Do I really want to know the details of the moderation? Maybe if I've moderation points (I don't). What I don't understand is why that table is centered and far from the place where moderation is show (top of the commentary)
Oh, and now let's go with the search field. Did you know slashdot has a search field? It has, it's just in the LAST place where you'd want it to be, in the top BOTTOM of every page.
And the left "menu". There's SO MUCH unuseful crap there that it hurts.
Oh, and the icons at the upper top of the page which represent the topics of the recently posted stories. It's just me who thinks that icons mean NOTHING? Even if you know what the icon means (and I doubt the computer icon means something to somebody in a computer-related site), if you want to tell users what have been the latest stories posted why not put some text about the stories themselves? Icons don't tell me if I want to click them - there're mozilla stories I want to read and there're mozilla stories I do NOT want to read so I just never click those icons
Hell, I'm not even a usability expert, but it's clear that slashdot does NOT looks good. I know there's a page where you get the list of the stories recently posted by all users for example, but I have NO idea where to find it. Sometimes I find it but I quickly forget it because it's not obvious at all.
There's a reason why sites like digg are gaining users: Is not that they're better, they just don't make you suffer to use them. They use javascript (slashdot could keep generating non-ajax code depending on the browser or keep a "old browser" compatibility page somewhere), etc.
And if it takes two years to modify the slash code to make slashdot usable just like it took years to make slash to use CSS, it means the slash code is crap.
And it's the...linux kernel changelog. I mean, there're things there that you're not going to understand if you don't understand a bit of kernel internals, just like you won't understand many details from the X.org changelog if you know nothing about graphics
If .NET is so cool why isn't Microsoft doing something similar?
Because Microsoft already has a lot of tools written in C++, and it'd be stupid to rewrite them just to "switch languages".
I'd expect that future developments will be done in C#, but why would Microsoft rewrite the whole OS in a new language for fun? Is that going to provide any new feature at all, except LOTS of work and new bugs?
You're right. Win2k uses a microkernel architecture. The kernel is kept tiny and streamlined, but upon receiving events it passes execution off to a userland service, which does all the work of addressing that event.
Uh? NT "microkernel" stopped being a real microkernel long time ago (just like mac os x). The TCP/IP stack, drivers (IDE/SCSI/SATA controllers, graphic/sound drivers etc), the filesystem, the VFS...EVERYTHING is in the kernel. In practice, windows and mac os x have the same disadvantages than monolithic kernels, except they were designed from scratch to be modular (in practice, monolithic kernels have evolved and become quite modular aswell, which is why these days monolithic kernels can continue adding features without rewriting the whole kernel and maintaining it despite of all the complexity hardware has today)
So, where exactly win2k "passes execution off to a userland service") As far as I know they implement in the kernel everything that a monolithic kernel implements, plus the graphics subsystem + window manager, plus software audio mixing, plus some parts of some codecs....
I don't think JVM's are the way to have decent security anymore. Things like SELinux allows you to run code natively (in any language) AND at the same time have sandbox-like security.
All the advantages, without any of the disadvantages. Why "virtual machines" exit at all? I already have a machine, a real one! Give me an operative system with a MAC framework, I'll leave others the overengineered abstractions.
Internet Explorer
Office
Word
Messenger
ass and breasts in high res
Could you change your sig? For some reason I don't continue reading the rest of the commentaries after seeing it.
Yes - but A year ago
MS are still the number 1 OS in education
I'm not shocked, here in Spain (and everywhere) the public schools are teaching windows/office on computer classes to all kids.
I mean, public schools are wasting lots of millions in making people learn microsoft-only technologies, and Microsoft is not wasting a single pennie on educating them.
"Public schools - monopolize yourself (tm)"
...I bet the actual citizens of the EU won't see a 0.01 of any actual money the EU fines.
So, we should stop fining microsoft and act like we don't care about their monopolistic behaviours basing ourselves in how much money we can get from all this?
Maybe Bill lined the pockets of the US govt, but MS did things to help resolve this
Right! I can uninstall Internet Explorer from my windows xp computer today, can't I?
and even did totally stupid things like un-bundle the media player just for the EU
Is not about not including a media player, is about NOT BEING ABLE TO UNINSTALL IT. The EU commission should have forced Microsoft to provide a uninstall method
WTF good is an OS without an included media player?
Have I lost something, is the EU commission trying to force vendors to ship computers without media player? As far as I know, the ONE reason why the EU commission is asking Microsoft to release a windows version without windows media is because vendors may want to install a DIFFERENT windows media player. By the way, maybe you will be surprise to hear this, but windows server has a media player installed and you can't remove it.
EU: It's not good enough.
MS: What's wrong with it? What parts are unclear?
Ah, yes. Except that the "documentation" that the commission is asking would actually allow other people (redhat, novell, sun, ibm) to build products which could integrate with windows clients so tightly as windows servers do.
Remember that 95% of the clients on the world use windows, so it's just NOT POSSIBLE to compete with Microsoft without that documentation. Non-microsoft server operating systems can't compete with microsoft without it.
Of course, that documentation would allow redhat, sun, ibm, novell etc. to compete with microsoft in europe, but in the WHOLE world. Yeah, I'm sure that Microsoft is being helpful here and helping the EU commission to document things as hard as they can.
And mind you, we're Europe, I don't claim we're the best but we have decent economies. $2.36 millions per day mean NOTHING for europe as a whole.
we shouldn't fine a company just because they are the major player or because they can afford it.
Except that Microsoft is a near monopoly and is playing dirty to avoid stop being the major player.
The Commission is asking Microsoft to DO-CU-MENT some things - propietary protocols used by windows clients like printing, networking etc. The commission is fining Microsoft because no matter how hard they try, Microsoft is NOT documenting anything.
The Commission wouldn't have to fine Microsoft if they didn't behave that way, in first place. Other companies haven't been able to compete with Microsoft for decades. Not because they don't know to create great products, but because Microsoft uses propietary protocols and tricks.
Why do you think Microsoft is selling so many windows servers? Is not that solaris & friends are bad server operative systems. Microsoft integrates clients with their servers using dirty tricks so no other server operating system on earth can integrate so tightly with windows clients as windows server does. Even if a company wants to compete, they CANT.
The commission is asking microsoft to document some things so other companies can compete as God intended. They're not asking them to give up their market share - they can continue being top 1 by creating good products - they're just forcing Microsoft to give opportunities to other companies. Microsoft is doing the impposible to avoid it, because they know sun, ibm, redhat etc. can build GREAT products which can put Windows server in shame, and they're not going to allow it if they can avoid it. I'm HAPPY Europe is doint this with Microsoft, the legal American system tried to do the same in the past but failed. Someone had to do it.
Well, it's the US where they're passing laws which make DRM legal (something that forbids me from choosing freely what product I want to buy, ej: you can't listen itunes song in any music player except in a ipod) or software patents (something that allows big companies to sit and sell licenses and win money without innovating anything or even trying to do better products)
It'd seem that US is not very interested in high-tech or software anymore, they just want to make shareholders happy with short-term operations by finding methods to monetize all what they have done in the past decades, without caring about the future at all, I guess that open source isn't that appealing in those market models.
A region from Spain, Extremadura, uses open source everywhere from schools to the machines in local-government buildings. It's not a very rich region but they want a different future, unlike the US
Oh, the Inquirer reports that vista eats 800 MB of RAM?
What makes you think that a product in development doesn't have a memory leak? What makes you think that Vista snapshots don't have the debug symbols compiled in?
And let me be the first to say that I'm not sure if that screenshots in that page really means the system is eating 800 MB of ram or they're also counting the filesystem cache as we do in linux.
Please, wait for the vista release and *then* speak.
You know, IBM *does* like TPM
I love smooth scrolling, in any app. It helps my mind to realize where the contents are going.
Without smooth scrolling I move the mouse wheel and I don't realize where I am, I need to stop and look if I've gone beyond of where I wanted.
It's like using a car with just a "0% acceleration" "100% acceleration" modes.
Actually, it probably does - that's what the "personalized search" is about I guess.
In the other hand, why on earth does microsoft thinks that a ajax scrollbar is going to be better than the integrated browser scrollbar? A way to keep the search field at first sight? I'd rather have a search field which moves when I scroll down the page than that thing....also, it's not obvious for users how that scrollbar must be used. How I get more results? I had to spend a time trying to figoure out what's going on there.
You can open PDF or PostScript files in GIMP
Wonderful, now I can edit PDFs with my favourite GTK office suite.
Of course it supports exporting to PDF; all KDE applications does.
Actually, kword can open PDF files, which is something that openoffice still can't do AFAIK.
There're many system supporting SCTP according to this page. Solaris and BSD with a external patch, for one, even there're windows implementations. But as usually, Microsoft, the "top 1" software company in the world isn't providing an implementation.
The Linux network stack is having tons of new things lately, SCTP is one, but how it compares with DCCP, which has also been implemented and merged in Linux?
The wikipedia assumes they share some properties, but it's SCTP a better DCCP, or what?
I really don't understand how they're going to get users to upgrade. If anything, this harms Skype. If I can't ru skype on a amd....i'll use...another VOIP program.